Based on extensive interviews, fan letters, and archival materials, Unbuttoning America explains how a real-life patricide in a small New England village circulated over time and became a bestselling novel, a film, and a television series. Peyton Place pushed to the surface the hidden talk and secret rebellions of a generation no longer willing to ignore the disparities and domestic constraints of Cold War America. Cameron argues that Peyton Place was an agent of change in the sexual and feminist revolutions we tend to locate in the 1960s. It was, she asserts, a story readers could literally get into and thereby helped to usher in a new normal in American life.,
